


After Life: Apologies

by tumantuke



Category: Senki Zesshou Symphogear
Genre: Alternate Universe - Afterlife, Fluff, Humor, Les Misérables reference apparently, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-30
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-07-27 15:54:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7624744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tumantuke/pseuds/tumantuke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finé may be properly dead now, but before she moved on she did a lot of awful things, including killing Kanade.</p><p>So of course, while trying to bone the Custodian, she bumps into a familiar face...</p><p>Followup to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/6176302">After Life</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After Life: Apologies

**Author's Note:**

> If you do a story about Finé in the afterlife, of course you have to do a story about her meeting Kanade it just wouldn't be proper if you didn't  
> Like the previous story, assumes the Custodian was an actual deity rather than a dayyity

**1.**  
**SHE MADE IT WEIRD**

 Somewhere outside of space and sideways from time, there's an eternal, spotless plain suffused with light and warmth. On that great plain, the souls of the dead come to rest after a life of suffering and toil, wending their way to a home most of them never knew existed.

And somewhere in the eternal plain's geographical center is a thing like a throne, from which a Presence harmonizes the weather of tomorrow with the events of today.

And right next to that throne, a woman older than written history is trying to get the creator of the universe to put her in the divine bone zone.

Her name is Finé.

And the phrase 'give up' is not a part of her lexicon, at least not when it comes to the one thing she's been after for thousands of years.

She has no idea how long she's been trying since she died, but she also knows it doesn't matter. Eternity is, by definition, enough time for anything.

"You know," Finé says, "the throne isn't quite what I was expecting."

WHAT WERE YOU EXPECTING. QUESTION MARK.

"You know exactly what I was expecting," she says coyly.

I AM MAKING CONVERSATION.

"Have it your way. I was expecting more bells and whistles. Flashes of lightning, seven thunders. And a rainbow like an emerald."

A RAINBOW CANNOT BY DEFINITION BE LIKE AN EMERALD. IT IS A RAINBOW. IT IS OF MANY COLORS.

Finé shrugs. "I'm not the one who wrote the book."

HE WAS STRICTLY SPEAKING NOT THE ONE WHO WROTE THE BOOK EITHER.

"No?"

HE WAS VERY FOND OF MUSHROOMS.

"Oh, I suppose. I never met him." Finé says, waving a hand in dismissal.

YOU WOULD NOT HAVE. YOU WERE BUSY AT THE TIME.

Finé shakes her head. "I'm always a little fuzzy when it comes to that long ago. Where was I-"

ROME.

"Ah, that whole mess with Nero," she says, already losing interest. She leans over the arm of the throne, making sure her breasts brush where the Presence's arm would be, if He had arms.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING.

"You are who knows everything," she whispers breathily. "What do you think I'm doing?"

YOU ARE ATTEMPTING A PHYSICAL IMPOSSIBILITY. AGAIN.

"Nothing's impossible for you," Finé says, donning a grin. It would be relevant at this point to note that a grin is the only thing she's wearing. Clothing is optional in the realm of the dead, yet Finé somehow manages to make being naked, in a place where just about everyone is naked, stand out.

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR YOU.

"Not if you have anything to say about it."

I HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY ABOUT IT. NONE OF THEM BODE WELL.

"Oh," says Finé. "I think we've found another formulation of the omnipotence paradox."

DO TELL.

"Could God create a woman even he couldn't fu-"

DON'T TELL.

Finé pouts - or tries to. What would have been a girlish affectation on anyone else just manages to make her look predatory. "Come on. Just do me already."

NO.

"Please?"

NO.

"Pretty please?"

GRAMMATICAL INTENSIFIERS DO NOT MAKE YOU MORE PERSUASIVE.

"How about if I-"

YOU CANNOT EROTICALLY STIMULATE I WHO AM NO MATTER HOW MANY SUGGESTIVE TONGUE MOTIONS YOU MAKE.

"Are you sure? I'm incredible with my tongue."

NO. LET THERE BE SILENCE. I AM LEAVING.

With that, the Presence vanishes into the distance, faster than a human eye, living or dead, can track it, leaving nothing behind but a faint aura of intense disapproval.

"You know You can't leave!" Finé yells as He departs. "You're omnipresent! You're technically still right here!"

Her voice rolls across the spotless plain. No response comes back.

She sighs, kicking at the plain in disappointment. After her second kick, the plain obliges her, materializing a pre-rusted soda can, which bounces over the horizon and disappears as her foot makes contact.

Finé has been dead for a long time, but she still remembers the simple pleasure of kicking things, although she's no longer the woman who enjoyed doing it to defenseless teenagers. Cans are fine things for kicking. They crumple satisfyingly when you hit them, they're light enough that they don't hurt your toes, and they don't curl up into emotionally shattered balls of agony and despair after they watch their friends and loved ones die trying to save the world from yo-

Ahem.

The point is, cans are good, and it's good that the raw creationstuff of the afterlife is capable of manifesting them.

What's not good is that the object of Finé's attention is still nowhere in sight.

Irritated, Finé whirls on the spot. "So it's hide and seek then!" she says, to no one in particular, to everything in general. "Very well. I like playing games. I invented hide and seek!"

Strictly speaking, she didn't. She invented a lot of things, but hide and seek wasn't one of them. She did, however, make a lot of things that made hiding necessary, because those things tended to kill people. Price of coexisting with a brilliant, yet thoroughly insane mind.

Placing her hands on her hips, she begins to walk off in the direction the Presence went. She thinks.

It's impossible to maintain your sense of direction in a place where there are literally no landmarks, and which is, strictly speaking, not a place. She walks for what feels like an age, and given the way time works, probably is, her bare feet slapping rhythmically against the plain's featureless surface.

As she walks, she falls to thinking, which she's been doing a lot of lately.

What could she be doing wrong?

Over the millennia, she's bagged thousands - at last count, give or take a dozen or so - of people, to the point that a significant fraction of the modern human race is descended from her, and she can't recall a single instance of having a hard time getting anyone into bed with her. Metaphorically, of course. The bed was optional in most cases, and at one point hadn't yet been invented.

She doesn't understand why, or how, she's having such a hard time with Him. There's that whole image and likeness clause in the creation cycle, right? Seducing the divine shouldn't be any different than seducing a human. At a certain point it's just a matter of scale.

"Oh! Miss Ryoko!"

A voice cuts into her revery. A very different voice from that she's spent the last eternity cajoling, propositioning, and sometimes outright earfucking, but hauntingly familiar.

"Over here!" the voice says.

Finé turns slowly and sees her: A tall girl with a shock of flaming hair that falls all the way down to her back, eyes like hazel flint, only infinitely warmer, waving enthusiastically.

Her heart would have stopped if that weren't technically impossible in this place.

The girl strides up to meet her, arms folded behind her back, a huge grin plastered on her face.

Oh dear.

For the first time since Finé arrived, she remembers that she's probably directly responsible for a huge number of people being up here before their time in the first place.

All thoughts of seducing the creator of the universe disappear for the moment as she faces the girl.

She manages to find her words.

"Hello, Kanade," she says.

 

* * *

 

 **2.**  
**I'm Really Sorry That I Killed You**

 Finé shouldn't be feeling cold. Ever since she died (again), she's learned that there are sensations that are no longer available to her.

For some reason, however, it feels as though the temperature has dropped several degrees.

Kanade hasn't said anything - she seems content to watch Finé with a smile on her face and her arms clasped, rocking back and forth like an autumn tree caught in the wind.

"I think I-" Finé begins, then stops.

"Think you what?" Kanade says.

Finé shakes her head, at a loss for words for perhaps the first time in her thousands of years of existence.

 _I think I owe you an apology,_ she was going to say _._

But that would be a bit of an understatement, wouldn't it?

After all, Finé didn't just kill Kanade. She also set her on the path that would eventually lead to her death by killing her entire family. Incidentally.

Somehow killing someone just because they happened to be standing a bit off to the left of the path you were taking seems worse than doing it with intent.

And when you've done something like that to someone, you're a little past the point of apologies.

Kanade looks at her curiously, still, unbelievably, smiling. She waits for Finé to continue.

She doesn't.

Kanade sighs and leans closer. "Is this about the concert?" she asks gently.

Finé shrinks back involuntarily, the sneering arch-schemer who ground millions under her heel long gone. "Among other things," she manages to say.

"The one where me and a lot of people died?"

"Were there any others?"

Kanade laughs, loud and free. "Zwei Wing had so many concerts, Miss Ryoko."

"Only one that resulted in the deaths of dozens of your fans. And you."

She shrugs, a carefree gesture that Finé remembers seeing her perform countless times. "One bad concert doesn't mean all the good ones didn't happen," she says.

Finé digests this for a moment, then shakes her head. "Why do you keep calling me that?"

"What?"

"Ryoko," she says. "That was never me. That was someone else I..."

"Oh, I know," Kanade says. "The real Ryoko Sakurai is up here too."

"Then why-"

"Because to me, you were Miss Ryoko. So you're still Miss Ryoko now."

"I killed her and stole her name and body."

"She's probably not really that upset about it anymore. I think after a while, it doesn't matter."

"The same way it doesn't really matter that-"

"Yes," Kanade says, shrugging again. "The same way it doesn't really matter to me that you killed me and most of the people I love. Death's weird that way."

She winks. "Although I would have been pretty mad if Tsubasa had ended up here early."

Finé can't help but smile when she remembers how close the two of them were, forgetting for the moment that the last time she saw them together, Tsubasa was screaming Kanade's name as Kanade died due to Finé's machinations. "Do you still keep track of her?"

Kanade nods. "On and off. She's doing really well now. Although there was a long stretch where she wouldn't forgive herself for what happened to me. Had to do the whole spirit-visitation thing to get her out of that."

This is not news to Finé. After all, she was there for the two years that Tsubasa spent trying to forge herself into the perfect sword.

It's worth noting that she feels a pretty bad about it now.

Kanade turns slightly, running her hand through her hair. "You know she still looks up to me? It's funny, she's older now than I ever was, but that hasn't changed how she thinks about me one bit."

"That's not funny," Finé says, frowning. "That's awful."

"Is it?"

"Yes. It's far too late for me to take anything back now, but you're saying your death left a hole in her that never really healed - that losing you caused damage so terrible that even now she hasn't moved on."

Kanade smiles, shaking her head. "No, it's not like that."

"No?"

"It's all in how you remember. For years, when she thought of me - when she could - everything was coloured by that one last day. If I had to be angry at you about something, I guess I would be angry at the fact that I literally died in her arms. That does awful things to a girl. But there were so many other days. So many good days." Kanade's smile widens into a grin. "She just needed a little prodding to remember that."

"I suppose," says Finé, trying not to remind herself that she's probably responsible for bad days existing in the first place. She decides to change the subject. "I was wondering something."

"Hm?"

"You've been up here a bit longer than me, correct?"

Kanade shrugs. "Time is weird here. I'd say yes."

"Well, why is it so empty up here? A hundred billion people have died since human history began and we started counting, I'd expect things to be a little more populated."

"Empty?" Kanade says, then laughs. "It looks empty to you?"

"What?"

"There are people everywhere I look." Kanade waves - to something or someone Finé can't see. "I actually know some of them. It's a miracle I even noticed you in this crowd."

"I hadn't noticed," Finé sighs.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing. Everything. I just feel as though I've wasted the last few millennia chasing after a dream. And murdering people. Mostly that second thing."

Kanade tilts her head, still smiling. "I guess you feel you have a lot to make up for."

"Yes," Finé says. "I do."

"There's no better time than now to start," Kanade says. "Go on - have a talk with them. All the people you feel you've wronged."

"How? I don't even know most of them."

"No," Kanade says. "But you've got all the time in the world. Several worlds."

Kanade lays a hand on Finé's back and gives her a little push. "Go on," she says. "They're waiting."

And as Finé watches, people begin to appear.

She even recognizes some of them.

Nervous for the first time in eternity, she takes a step forward.

 

* * *

 

 **3.**  
**Mysterious Ways**

Kanade folds her hands behind her head and watches Finé walk off into the crowd, feeling a vague sense of satisfaction. Before she can walk off - not that there's anywhere, really, to go, that's the funny thing about eternity - a golden warmth wells up behind her.

It says:

SHE IS GONE.

"Relative to you, as gone as she can be, considering you're everywhere," Kanade says.

SHE IS NO LONGER GOING TO TRY AND SEDUCE I WHO AM.

Kanade shrugs. "'You who are' know better than that. Depending on how many people she apologizes to, I figure she'll be back at it in a few thousand years, give or take."

A FEW MILLENNIA OF SUBJECTIVE TIME IS SUFFICIENT.

"Yeah. At least she'll be spending that time doing something worthwhile. Growing closer to people. She's been alone for a long time." Kanade smiles. "In a way, she'll be getting closer to you than she ever was."

INDEED. QUESTION MARK.

Kanade nods. "There's a song. It goes something like - 'to love another person is to see the face of God'."

There is silence on the eternal plain for a few moments. Kanade breaks it, as she is so fond of doing.

"Well?" she says.

WELL WHAT.

"Isn't there something you have to say?"

I AM WHO IS FAMILIAR WITH THE HUMAN CUSTOM OF GRATITUDE. IT IS INAPPLICABLE TO ME. I AM NOT WHO GIVES THANKS. I AM GIVEN THANKS TO.

"You know your awful attitude is the whole reason she went crazy and killed billions of people, right?" Kanade places her hands on her hips. "I mean, I didn't do it for you, but thanks would be nice."

FOR WHOM DID YOU DO IT.

"You know everything," Kanade says. "You know who I did it for."

I AM MAKING CONVERSATION.

"Alright then. Her. Of course I did it for her." Kanade shrugs. "She was miserable. She needed closure. I know all about that."

AND YOU DID IT BECAUSE. QUESTION MARK.

"Do I need a reason?"

HUMANS NEED REASONS FOR EVERYTHING THEY DO. IT IS PART OF WHAT MAKES THEM HUMAN.

"Fine," Kanade says. "I did it because it was the right thing to do."

RIGHT IS-

"'A human concept', yeah, yeah." Kanade shakes her head. "I don't understand why she likes you so much. I think if I were stuck up here with just you for eternity, I'd probably go crazy."

INSANITY IS NOT TECHNICALLY POSSIBLE IN THIS SPACETIME.

Kanade sighs. Talking to the Custodian is often a sorely trying affair. Sometimes, however, he manages to surprise her.

I MAY BE ABLE TO REWARD YOU.

Such as now.

"Really?"

ACCORDING TO THE HUMAN CUSTOM OF GRATITUDE.

"Well, at least you're trying something new," Kanade says. "Reward me how?"

I CAN GIVE YOU KNOWLEDGE.

"About what."

WHEN THE HUMAN YOU CALL TSUBASA KAZANARI WILL MAKE HER WAY HERE.

Kanade claps a hand to her face. "That would be the opposite of a reward, you stupid ball of light. That would actually just upset me."

WOULD IT.

"Yes!" Kanade sighs. "You may be omniscient, but I think you still have a lot to learn about humans. As contradictory as that sounds."

YOU WILL TEACH I WHO AM.

"You haven't really gotten it after thousands of years. I don't think I could teach you no matter how long I had."

YOU HAVE AN ETERNITY TO TRY.

Kanade smiles to herself. "Yes, I guess I do."

 

**Author's Note:**

> we don't really know a lot about Kanade other than "brave", "kind", "vomited a lot of blood", and "she was 17, she loved Tsubasa" but I like the idea of her having the stones to tell the Custodian when he's being a little shit. after all if there's anything we know about Kanade, it's that she had stones for days.


End file.
